British Crop Group Speaker Claims Organic Farming on a Global Basis Would be an Environmental Catastrophe
Nobel Laureates, World Leaders and Even Greenpeace Founder
Prefer High-Yielding Conventional Agriculture
Contact: Alex Avery of the Center for Global Food Issues, 540-337-6354, or aavery@rica.net.
Churchville, VA, November 15, 2002 – Dennis Avery, Director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues (CGFI) will present a speech at the British Crop Protection Council Conference this Monday, November 18th, during their symposium, “The Global Challenge – Sustainable Food Production.” (Full schedule at http://www.bcpc.org).
With the rallying call of “Growing More Per Acre, Leaves More Room for Nature,” Mr. Avery will address the need to increase global food supplies for a world population expected to reach 9 billion by the year 2050 while simultaneously protecting the earth’s biodiversity. Mr. Avery will discuss the benefits of modern farming practices, which have allowed mankind to increase food production on limited amounts of land, and he will challenge public misperceptions often created by the organic food industry.
“Some tout organic farming as the answer, yet scientific data show that if organic farming practices were employed on a global basis, the consequences would be an environmental catastrophe,” claims Avery. “Additionally, organic practices even on a limited scale are challenged by groups like the Scottish Crop Research Institute as being ecologically unsound.”
Nitrogen fertilizer which is sustainably produced from atmospheric nitrogen — 78 percent of the earth’s atmosphere is nitrogen — is not allowed under organic farming rules. Dr. Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba estimates that a worldwide organic farming mandate would require the manure from another 7-8 billion cattle to replace the aerial nitrogen high-yield farmers currently use. The United States alone would need nearly one billion additional cattle to replace its current nitrogen fertilizer use, but the US could not feed that many cattle, even if it were to use all available land, including all of its parks and natural forests.
The Bichel Committee, appointed by the Danish government to assess the impact of imposing organic farming on all Danish farms, concluded in 1999 that overall it would slash Danish human food production by 47 percent, and specifically it would cut grain and pulse production by 62 percent, cut pork and poultry production by 70 percent, and reduce potato output by 80 percent. Virtually overnight, Denmark would barely be able to feed itself, and its current export customers would have to clear millions of acres of their existing forests for additional farmland. To make up the nitrogen deficit, cattle manure would become Denmark’s biggest farm product.
Great Britain’s Cooperative Wholesale Association, which farms 80,000 acres in both mainstream and organic modes, told the House of Lords in 1999 that it gets 44 percent less wheat from its organic fields. By this count, producing Europe’s current food supply organically would require clearing additional farmland equal to all of the forests in Germany, France, Denmark and the UK. Reports now confirm that, coinciding with the UK’s government-supported conversion of high-yield conventional farm land to organic farms, Britain is becoming more dependent upon food imports from other lands to feed itself.
On this point Avery notes, “While children in Southern Africa and other famine stricken areas of the world die of starvation, it is indefensible for wealthy and technology-rich countries like the United Kingdom to be growing less of the food which they are capable of producing and increasing their agricultural demands from other countries to support this inexplicable desire for organic fad foods.”
The Soil and Water Conservation Society of America has declared modern high-yield farming the most sustainable in history because of its unprecedented ability to minimize farming’s land requirements while sustaining soil fertility, preventing soil erosion and controlling pests through integrated pest management. Today biotechnology promises the biggest sustainability breakthrough in 100 years, as scientists create plants which actually take contaminating salts out of the soil – making the irrigated 40 percent of the world’s food production base sustainable for the first time.
More than 700 people have joined Greenpeace Founder Patrick Moore and two Nobel Peace Prize laureates — Dr. Norman Borlaug, the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Dr. Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and the 1986 Nobel Peace laureate – in signing the “Declaration in Support of Protecting Nature With High-yield Farming and Forestry.” This Monday Mr. Avery will invite the BCPC, its affiliates, and all concerned conservationists, to sign the declaration at http://www.HighYieldConservation.org.
